Dame Shirley Porter: sold
council homes cheaply to boost Conservative support

The decision to impose a £31.6m surcharge on Dame Shirley Porter
and a former colleague in the Westminster City Council "homes
for votes" scandal has been upheld by the High Court - but four
others have been cleared of wrongdoing.

Three judges ruled that the district auditor, John Magill, acted
lawfully when he demanded the payment from the former Conservative
leader of the council and her deputy, David Weeks. The auditor had found them guilty of "willful
misconduct" and "disgraceful and improper
gerrymandering" between 1987 and 1989.

Lord Justice Rose, sitting with Mr Justice Latham and Mr Justice
Keene, said the Tesco heiress and Mr Weeks "lied to us as they
have done to the auditor because they had the ulterior purpose of
altering the electorate" in eight marginal wards by selling
council homes cheaply to people more likely to vote Conservative.

"I am surprised by judgment"

There was a crumb of comfort for Dame Shirley, 66, who was not in
court, when the judges ruled the original surcharge imposed by Mr
Magill of £31.6m was too high and reduced it to just over £27m.
The judges cleared three others surcharged of any misconduct.

Former
councillor Peter Hartley: "I feel elated that years of
worry have been lifted from my shoulders"

The court is still considering the case of Paul Hayler, whose appeal
was stayed because of illness. Dame Shirley said in a statement: "I am delighted the
officers and Mr Hartley have been cleared of any wrongdoing. "I am therefore surprised by today's judgment regarding
myself and David Weeks.

"Strong grounds for appeal"

She added: "I will be consulting my lawyers about matters
arising from this judgment." "We have been advised in light of the decision regarding the
others that we have strong grounds for appeal." The judges had refused Dame Shirley and Mr Weeks, who now face a
bill for legal costs estimated at £2m, leave to appeal against the
decision. But it is still open to them to ask the Court of Appeal to
hear their case.

Afterwards, Mr England said: "We are very pleased. The
implications were frightening - bankruptcy and ruin. "I'll sleep well tonight. I didn't last night."
Anthony Scrivener QC, for Dame Shirley, said she believed, after
taking legal advice, that a policy of keeping council homes empty
and selling them cheaply to boost Tory support in marginal wards
would be lawful if implemented citywide.

The QC said: "There has never been a case of wilful
misconduct where members have followed legal advice." He accused Mr Magill of conducting an "unfair and
inappropriate" Watergate-style inquiry - acting as
"investigator, judge, prosecutor and his own expert
witness," contrary to the rules of fairness and the European
Convention on Human Rights.

District
auditor John Magill was criticised for taking seven years to
complete inquiry

But Lord Justice Rose dismissed the appeal, saying that both Dame
Shirley and Mr Weeks had lied to the court when they said the
designation of sales in marginal wards had been abandoned. He described Dame Shirley as a "formidable personality with
single-minded determination." District Auditor John Magill later hailed the outcome as a
"terrific decision".

"I hope she has decency to recompense taxpayers"

Local government minister Hilary Armstrong told BBC Radio 4's The
World at One: Ms Armstrong said the Government may consider introducing a
criminal offence called the Misuse of Public
Office, to apply at
both central and local government level.

Sorry
end for headline-grabbing Dame Shirley

Law lords ruling marks official conclusion to longest running and
biggest local government scandal

THE
GUARDIAN
- Friday December 14, 2001

The unanimous
ruling against Dame Shirley Porter by the law lords yesterday marks
the official end of the longest running and biggest local government
corruption scandal in Britain. It also marks an ignominious
conclusion for the public career of one of the country's most
flamboyant politicians who was ordered to pay a £27m surcharge for
"wilful misconduct".

The headline-grabbing millionaire Tesco heiress dominated the
political scene in London in the 80s just as Mrs Thatcher dominated
national politics. Dame Shirley was determined to make Westminster
council a Tory byword for efficiency and low cost government.

She was wealthy (named by Vogue as the 20th richest woman in
Europe), ruthless, vain and never shy of using any gimmick -
including posing as a council litter collector in St James's Park.
But her rule of
iron in Westminster came within a whisker of collapse in the late
80s when the then unreformed Labour party was within four votes of
capturing the council.

A lobbying company was appointed to advise her how to stop
socialists - now many of them New Labour MPs - getting control of a
borough that included Buckingham Palace, the Houses of Parliament,
Belgravia and Mayfair.

At the same time Dame Shirley started what the law lords
described yesterday as the unlawful and corrupt policy of
gerrymandering the poor - and thought to be Labour voting - and
homeless out of the borough. Officially it was called "building
stable communities" but it became known as the homes-for-votes
scandal.

Dame Shirley and David Weeks - her successor as leader -
organised a series of secret meetings to draw up "battle
zones" of council property in marginal wards to ensure that
these were sold off to prosperous and hopefully Tory voting
professionals to prevent what Dame Shirley described as the
Trotskyists taking over. The poor were to be housed outside the
borough or in expensive bed and breakfast accommodation.

The house sale policy was described yesterday by Lord Bingham as
surrounded by "pretence, obfuscation and prevarication".
If it was genuinely believed to be lawful, albeit controversial,
there was no need for such "intensive camouflage", he
said. The ploy worked - although in hindsight it may not have
been needed - and the Tories were returned with an increased
majority in the 1990 elections.

Electors backed by Labour councillors, Peter Bradley and Andrew
Dismore, who are now MPs, went to court and secured a full scale
investigation by the district auditor. The unsung work was done by
Neale Coleman, a councillor, who has now left Labour to be one of
the advisers to Ken Livingstone, the mayor of London.

There followed a most extraordinary 10-year battle between Dame
Shirley and John Magill, the shy and quietly spoken auditor, in
Deloitte and Touche. He doggedly pursued her while she prevaricated
and delayed. Three times she failed to get him
dismissed. The scandal was also the subject of a BBC Panorama
investigation and included damning evidence of gerry mandering from
Patricia Kirwan, a Tory councillor now retired to France.

The report from Mr Magill was damning. Not only her and Mr Weeks
but eight other councillors and officials were found guilty of
"disgraceful gerrymandering". Mr Magill's
description of life under Dame Shirley's council was outlined in
extraordinary detail in 235 pages showing how top Conservatives
deceived fellow councillors, lawyers and voters and deprived
homeless people of help in an attempt to alter the electoral
composition of the borough to party advantage.

At that time he said the surcharge should be £21.25m shared
between the 10. The inquiry had cost £3m, the most expensive
council audit investigation in history. One councillor,
Michael Dutt, who owed £2m, committed suicide. But over a series of
appeals by the officials and other councillors, the decision was
reversed. This left Dame Shirley and Mr Weeks who faced an even
higher bill of £31m surcharge.

Dame Shirley controversially engaged Lord Neill, then the
independent chairman of the committee on standards in public life,
to give her advice on local government practice. He had however to
pull out, since Britain's top sleazebuster might be accused of a
conflict of interest if he was helping someone accused of being
mired in sleaze and gerrymandering.

However the advice proved timely and in 1999 the court of appeal
overturned the case against Dame Shirley and Mr Weeks . Dame Shirley
said that should be the end of it and was furious when the audit
commission, well advised (as it turned out yesterday) by lawyer Tony
Childs, was determined to take the case to the House of Lords.

She warned this would be a waste of taxpayers' money and was
helped by the fact that a government review recommended scrapping
the surcharge system for local government. Yesterday
however the audit commission was amply vindicated when all five law
lords found for the district auditor and also said that the
commission should recover its costs. The law lords could not contain
their praise of the work of the shy auditor behind the whole
process.

Lord Scott said: "Detection and exposure is, however, often
difficult and, where it happens, is usually attributable to
determined efforts by political opponents or investigative
journalists or by both in tandem." But,
where local government was concerned, there was an additional very
important bulwark against misconduct - the independent district
auditor.

Dame Shirley was still fighting back last night by saying she
would go to the European court of human rights. As
for the money, will anyone see it? Dame
Shirley is already effectively a political exile in the UK -
dividing her time between Israel and California. If
she ever does hand over the cash, the main beneficiary ironically
will be Westminster council which is even more under the control of
the Tories today than it was in 1990.

WE
MAY NOT BE ALONE - CHECK OUT THE LINKS BELOW - WE ACCEPT NO RESPONSIBILITY
FOR THE ACCURACY OF ANY FEATURED LINK ON THIS SITE AND THE VIEWS EXPRESSED
THEREIN.

IF
YOU HAVE ANY GOOD STORIES TO TELL WE'D LIKE TO HEAR FROM YOU. WHY NOT BUILD A WEBSITE
OF YOUR OWN TO TELL OF PROBLEMS IN YOUR AREA - IT'S YOUR
RIGHT.
WE WILL LINK TO YOUR SITE WITH A SHORT SUMMARY. DON'T LET THEM GET
AWAY WITH IT.

With
thanks to the Wealden Action Group
and other Action Groups across the country.